Corporación CEFA, owner of Fischel, Catedral and Farmatica, has announced that it is to open more stores in the rest of the year with one for Escazu in November and another for Limón in December.

Meanwhile, Aquileo Sánchez corporate communication director for Walmart did not mention how many new drugstores it plans to open but stated that its future supermarkets will each include a pharmacy. This corporation owns 158 stores in Costa Rica, spread across different brands.

In Costa Rica, three companies are using the electronic invoices system: Automercado, Cefa and Softland.

This regulation was proposed by GS1, together with the Treasury Ministry.

"Softland (formerly Exactus), included an electric invoices module in their ERP system one year ago, and started using it with their customers", reports Elfinancierocr.com. "According to them, they managed to increase collection and reduced credit notes in 50%".

The pharmaceutical group Socofar acquired 50% of the Costa Rican operation Cefa Corporation.

The alliance between the two companies will allow the financing Cefa’s expansion to Central America and the Caribbean. Among the plans is the recovery of the Honduran and Salvadoran market and consolidation of operations in Nicaragua

"Arnaldo Garnier, chairman of the board of Cefa, affirmed that the agreement will also allow the Costa rican company, which is 56 years old and with annual sales exceeding $250 million, to manufacture a private Socofar brand for a line of personal care products and strengthen its drug segment (institutional market), in which Chile is a leader in its country, where it has operated for 40 years and has annual sales of around $1,000 million", notes Elfinancierocr.com

Through a new division, DIPO Pharmaceutics (Dipo Farmacéutica), the distribution company will serve the pharmaceutics industry.

DIPO has warehouses in Guanacaste, San Carlos, Pérez Zeledón, Pococí and San José. It currently serves 11.000 businesses and plans to serve 1.000 more with the new division.

From Elfinancierocr.com: “Dipo will enter the highly competitive market of medicine distribution. The largest participants are now Cofasa, Grupo Farmanova and Cefa. The latter recently decided to focus in Costa Rica by selling its operations in Honduras and El Salvador”.

Corporation Cefa-Fischel is gaining more and more of the market share in Costa Rica, with tactics that are being denounced as anti-competitive business practices.

An article by César Quirós Brenes in Elfinancierocr.com reports on up to what point Cefa-Fischel Corporation has reached in the drug retail sector in Costa Rica: "Of the 950 active pharmacies as of 15 June, 67 (7% of total) are Fischel stores. Just this year new 10 stores have been reported by the chain.

A study by the Universidad de Costa Rica notes that one company controls the distribution of 80% of drugs sold, with price differences of up to 1,000%.

An article in Nacion.com reports that there is "little or no competition in the private sector of medicine, product of an industry that is "highly concentrated", causing Costa Rica to have higher drug prices compared to other Central American countries."

In Costa Rica, Compañía Farmacéutica S. A. (Cofasa) has filed a suit over monopolistic acts by the Corporation which owns the Fischel pharmacies .

Cofasa's lawyer, in a complaint before the National Competition Commission at the Ministry of Economy, said that the CEFA Corporation, which owns the pharmacy chain Fischel, "... concentrates in the same company the manufacturing, importation, purchase from national manufacturers, wholesale distribution and retail sale of medicines", reports Nacion.com.

Laboratorios Microsules is a Uruguayan company, which has been in both, the local and international market for twenty years, manufacturing, synthesising, commercialising and distributing medicines for animal health.
Operates in Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua and Panama
Phone: (00598) 98165211 - (00598) 99728874